Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/374

 stairs and below I saw many of Andrea's studies of figure; first, a sketch of Lucrezia seated with legs bare, perfect in shapeliness and state; in a larger drawing she is naked, and holds a child; sitting, as I presume, for the appropriate part of the Virgin. There is another and most beautiful drawing on yellow paper, which gives her full face in all its glory of form without a fault—not heavenly, but adorable as heaven. His sketches of landscape and studies of children are lovely and many: round-limbed babies in red-chalk outline, with full-blown laughter in their mouths and eyes; such flowers of flesh and live fruits of man as only a great love and liking for new-born children could have helped him to render. The wonderful and beautiful make of limb and feature, the lovely lines and warm curves of the little form, are so tenderly and fully made the most of and caressed as with mother's hands, that here as in his portrait you can tell at once his fondness for them. His sad and sensitive smiling face has the look of a lover of children; the quiet and queenly beauty of his wife has not. One superb boy-baby {in Sidney's phrase, a "heavenly fool with most kiss-worthy face") attempting to embrace his round fat knees with his fat round arms, and laughing with delight in the difficulty, is a more triumphant child than ever painter drew before or since. A sketch of a castle with outlying lodge is marked as "begun on the twentieth of August, 1527." Among other studies is one of a cavalry skirmish among the rounded and rising downs of a high hill-country, with a church and castle at hand. Among the figure drawings I took note of these: a portrait in profile of a man still young, ill